


uncurling like flowers (some things you let go in order to live)

by maviswrites



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Tension, Bonding, Canonical Character Death, Celebrations, Character Study, F/M, Getting Together, Hordak-Centric, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, Lab Partners, Memory Loss, Minor Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Past Torture, Personal Growth, Post-Canon, Religious Cults, Self-Discovery, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) Season 5 Spoilers, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24211348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maviswrites/pseuds/maviswrites
Summary: In the immediate aftermath of the final battle, Hordak considers his relationships with Horde Prime, Catra, Entrapta, and, most importantly, himself.
Relationships: Catra & Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Hordak & Horde Prime (She-Ra)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 441





	uncurling like flowers (some things you let go in order to live)

**Author's Note:**

> So I binged the entirety of the final season in a day, cried a lot, and found myself writing this, set during/after the very last scene. MAJOR spoilers for She-Ra season 5 below!
> 
> I felt really intense compassion for Hordak and the other clones once we knew more about their background. I really hope they all find their places in the world.
> 
> Title is from Florence + The Machine's "Various Storms & Saints."

Entrapta led him into the crowd of people hugging and crying, still grinning widely. He followed as she tugged him along, even though it felt strange and rather wrong to do so. It still seemed like the best place to be, if she was the one leading him.

He ignored the comments thrown his way by some of them and kept walking, surprised when Entrapta eventually stopped in front of another clone. He squinted at him. Was this the clone that had been helping the Rebellion? He vaguely remembered knowing about such a thing, when Horde Prime had been… in his head, for lack of a better phrase.

A lot of memories were hazy right now.

“Hordak, I’d like to introduce you to Wrong Hordak.”

The clone winked at him. “Hello, brother.”

He blinked, twice. “Wrong… Hordak?”

Entrapta beamed at him, jumping up and down slightly while balanced on the tips of her hair. One of her gloved hands was still latched onto his arm. He noticed that she was doing more of that, touching and hugging him with her hands instead of just her hair. She’d been touching him since he’d… awoken, for lack of a better word, in front of She-Ra. “I thought he might be you at first, on Prime’s ship!” she explained. “But he wasn’t, and it was a nickname, and it just kind of stuck.”

“Stuck,” he repeated. Words were coming to him, just… slowly.

“That’s right, that won’t do at all,” she rubbed a strand of hair across her chin, thinking hard, before turning to Wrong Hordak. “You need a name! Like Emily did when I made her!”

“Emily?” Wrong Hordak asked quizzically. “You mean the loud robot?”

Entrapta nodded furiously. “Yes, but of course we can’t also name you Emily. That would be just as confusing!”

“What should I be called?” Wrong Hordak asked, before winking again.

It ill-suited the tone of their conversation to wink at such a time, Hordak thought, but he didn’t say anything, partly because he wasn’t quite sure how and partly because he didn’t think it would’ve been kind to say so. He had never worried about being kind before, but… He surveyed all the people around him, who had saved him despite everything. Perhaps it was time.

“You should come up with a name for yourself,” Entrapta suggested. “It’s what Hordak did.”

They both turned to look at him, his lab partner and his brother, and he felt tongue-tied. Put on the spot. “It… helped,” he said shortly. “To make my life my own.”

Wrong Hordak nodded. “I shall have to think of one,” he said. “Perhaps when I go, I can think about it on my journey.”

Entrapta’s grip on Hordak’s arm tightened, just slightly. “You’re leaving?” she asked. “But we just won!”

“My brothers,” Wrong Hordak said, with a knowing look toward Hordak, “they have all just suffered… a massive loss. Horde Prime is gone. They do not know a life without him. They do not know his lies, and so they will not know how to go on. They are scattered across the universe, on all the planets that Horde Prime conquered and left alive to use for resources. They may need my help.”

“Oh.” She loosened her hold. “I see. Will you take the rest of your brothers with you?”

He made a face that looked like he would shrug, if he knew how to do it. “If they wish to come. I think we should be allowed to separate, to live our own lives. If some of us wish to stay on Etheria,” he hesitated, “would it be allowed?”

Hordak felt suddenly, terribly tired and yet angry, all at once. “There should be no ‘allowed,’ anymore,” he said. “They should not be punished for Horde Prime’s control over them. They made no decisions of their own. But… if the princesses exile them from their lands, I shall help find a place for them. There are parts of Etheria that remain uninhabited.”

Making a tutting noise, Entrapta looked over to where the other princesses were, and he followed her gaze. Scorpia, Perfuma, and Frosta were still hugging and Mermista was still with Sea Hawk. She looked farther, squinting in the sunlight. Glimmer and Adora were with Bow and Catra, lying on the grass. “They won’t banish you. They’re not like that, I don’t think. But even if they did, all of you will always have a place in Dryl, if I can help it. There’s not a lot of people. It’s mostly bots. But I’d want you to stay, if any of you wanted to.”

She said the last part while looking straight at him, and there was something so raw and honest in her words that he didn’t know how he could possibly respond. “There you have it,” he finally managed, turning to Wrong Hordak. “Do you intend to dismantle Horde Prime’s intergalactic system, then? When you free our brothers?”

“Did someone say ‘dismantle a corrupt imperialist system’?” screeched a voice, and then the flying rainbow horse was upon them.

It took all Hordak had not to flinch, but he succeeded, taking in the sight of the multicolored beast—"Swift Wind," he thought it was called—resting its enormous head on his brother’s shoulder. “He did not say ‘corrupt,’” Wrong Hordak corrected, not looking the slightest bit concerned about the gigantic magical animal leaning its weight against him. “But yes, I think without Horde Prime there to hold it up, it will eventually collapse.”

“Man, that is my jam!” said the horse exuberantly. "I wanna help!"

Hordak moved slightly behind Entrapta. She did not seem to notice, or if she did, she did not care.

“Do you wish to come?” Wrong Hordak asked.

Swift Wind’s eyes flickered in the direction of Adora. “I—” he half-sighed, half-whinnied. “Let me think about it? Talk to some folks?”

“Naturally.”

When Swift Wind had trotted off in Adora’s direction, Entrapta turned back to Wrong Hordak. “Will you need a ship?” she asked. “There’s Darla, of course, but she’s, well, she’s Adora’s. And she needs a _lot_ of repairs from coming in through the atmosphere so fast, though I haven’t had time to get to them yet, what with the whole ‘having to decrypt Horde Prime’s signal and interrupt it and not get killed’ thing I’ve been doing lately.”

Wrong Hordak raised his arms up to the sky. “We have many ships we can still access from the armada. Except, of course, Horde Prime’s.”

Following his brother’s gesture, Hordak found himself looking at the giant floating forest, just visible up in space, that had once been their mothership. The enormous greenness and _life_ of it all was almost impossible to comprehend when he thought about the gray, metal ship he had been on only moments ago. The ship where—

Where so many bad things had happened.

“Well, if you need anything,” he vaguely heard Entrapta saying to his brother, “just ask! My lab partner and I can fix it up for you!”

She squeezed his arm a little then, and he broke out of his daze at the touch. Her lab partner...

Him. She was talking about _him_.

He remained speechless as Wrong Hordak walked away, presumably to discuss how to topple an imperialist regime with Swift Wind. He stayed silent as Entrapta hugged Perfuma and Scorpia, though he was forced to grunt an acknowledgment when Scorpia awkwardly, repeatedly called him boss and tried, too late, to tender her resignation from the Horde.

Entrapta hugged Mermista and Frosta as well, though she let him back away a little before she approached them, if only to avoid the awkwardness of two princesses who were not quite so forgiving. He stood far behind, noticing how the Etherians swirled around him: hugging each other, crying, laughing, celebrating.

“You sticking around, then?”

He turned to find Catra looking uncertainly at him, arms crossed over her chest defensively, not aggressively. A long time ago, she would have been smirking, and he would have hated it, hated her. She had manipulated and lied to him, stolen Entrapta away from him, made him lose _everything_ —

And yet. And yet, he had it back now. He was _free_ , now.

“I have not taken the time to consider it,” he said lowly. “Are you?”

She craned her neck, looking over her shoulder. Adora stood some several feet back, her arms around Bow and Glimmer’s shoulders, and she was laughing carelessly in a way that probably nobody had heard since they were children. A reluctant, soft smile came over Catra’s face when she heard it. “Yeah, I think I am.”

They had once been bitter enemies, he remembered, even though his memories were slow in returning. And yet, they were not the same people they had been before Horde Prime came. They had both been “purified,” made anew and then rebroken. And they had found their own ways out of his brother’s grasp, the darkness he had called home for so long. She had made herself a family, parts of which had long been lost to her, and he had…

He had saved his partner. But she had saved him first.

“I will have to consult with Entrapta on the matter,” he said, returning to the present and clearing his throat harshly. “She may wish to explore the depths of space. I would like to go, too, if she wishes me to remain with her.”

“I get it,” Catra said, running her fingers through her now-short hair. “Adora wants to go on some… galactic road-trip, I guess. I’ll go, if that’s what she wants. I’ll go anywhere she likes.”

It was a strange understanding between them, to be in the same situation. To be bound to a princess, and to like it, and to want things to stay that way. He nodded in her direction, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. Once it would have been a dismissal. Not anymore—he didn’t have that power over anyone, anymore.

It felt odd, to not want it back, but he didn’t. The Horde was dead. Let it stay that way.

“We’ve got a lot to make up for,” Catra murmured, looking back in Adora’s direction.

He scanned the crowd ahead of him. Entrapta was speaking to Emily, who was excitedly spinning around in circles between her and Scorpia, and the two of them were laughing. She understood her tech, much better than she understood people, and yet she still knew the latter so much better than he ever had. She had understood _him_ , after all, in a way that no one had. Not even Horde Prime. Perhaps she could help him understand how to begin to make reparations for his past.

“I will consult with her on that as well, then,” he replied. It would not be perfect, but it had to be his best.

Catra shifted uneasily on her feet. “Shadow Weaver’s gone. She sacrificed herself for me and Adora, in the end.” She snorted, but it wasn’t a happy noise. “Guess she finally did one motherly thing in her life.”

The look she was giving him made him uncomfortable. “I… have never claimed to be your father,” Hordak said slowly. Did she _want_ that…?

“Ew, gross, no,” Catra wrinkled her nose at the thought. “Also, yeah, I got that when you tried to blast me with your arm cannon, _Dad_.”

The word sounded strange to his ears. _Brother_ , he had been called and had called others. It was a twisted concept of family, he was starting to understand, but it had been a kind of family, nonetheless. With one really harmful patriarch. And he had created his own version of that family, with him in a pseudo-Prime position. Even if he had not read their minds, or controlled their every thought… “I have hurt you,” he said. “Just by bringing you and the others into the Horde, I have hurt you. I regret it. Had I known what Horde Prime was—how he lied—”

“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty,” Catra shrugged. “I had him in my head, too. Not saying it was right of you or anything, but… I get what he was like. How he made everything about serving him. If I’d gotten stranded on some nowhere planet, in your situation? I’m just saying, I—I get it.”

He remembered that day, years and years ago, when he had first come to Etheria. How, for a moment, he had hoped it was a reprieve from Horde Prime—to save him at the last moment from being cut down on the front lines of battle. But then he had realized that this was a planet that the Horde had clearly never touched. That he was alone.

He had mourned when he realized near-immediately that he was too far away, and the hive mind was gone from him. It felt unspeakably wrong, to have a lack of voices in his head, to have no knowledge of Horde Prime’s doings or desires. To be unable to serve.

“I did what I did for a being who I thought was my—” he stopped. “He _was_ my everything. But no longer. I have something new, now. Some _one_ new.”

Catra smiled, her eyes distant again. Adora’s laughter carried on the breeze. “I get that, too.”

When Entrapta returned, he was standing by himself again, and Catra was back amongst her new friends. Emily bumped into his ankle affectionately, nearly bowling him over. “She missed you!” Entrapta squealed, running a wave of hair over the bot.

He made a noise of acknowledgment, and Emily beeped back at him as she suddenly rolled away, probably remembering that getting in his space hadn’t been a wise action in the past. Emily had rarely been left alone with him in their lab back in the Fright Zone, and their relationship was mostly one of mutually pretending the other wasn’t there.

The affection felt… unusual to receive from anyone, let alone a bot, and yet he had liked it even if it was uncomfortable. Reaching out a hand tentatively, he touched it to Emily’s smooth surface and began to rub his hand up and down, petting her. She beeped happily, several times, and rolled a little closer to him so he could reach better.

“Hordak?”

"Yes?" he tried something akin to scratching, and Emily shrieked in a way that sounded like she had liked it, so he did it again.

"Did you hear me? I said she missed you."

He pursed his lips in concentration as he ran his fingers over Emily’s exterior, lips quirking when she whirred and buzzed with content. “Hm.”

“Hordak? _I_ missed you, too.”

He straightened when she spoke. Her voice was full of emotion, no doubt, and yet he could not identify it. It had sounded like it meant something important to her, to say that where he could hear it, and he could not tell if she was happy or sad or something in-between. Perhaps she was crying and, if so, he did not know what he would do. Without removing his hand—afraid to move—he looked at her.

Entrapta’s face was shining when he turned to her, but she wasn’t crying. She was smiling, just a little, her teeth not even showing, and she seemed… immeasurably fond. And she was looking at _him_ , of all things.

“I did not miss you,” he said, then winced when he realized how that must have sounded. But she looked at him patiently. She knew how sometimes words came hard, because it was like that for her, too. “For a time, I did not know there was anything to miss. Then, I found this,” he opened his other palm, revealing their crystal, “and, with only flashes of my memory, I felt—”

The right words didn't exist.

“Empty,” she supplied.

“Empty,” he agreed, grateful for the help. “I don’t know… how to put it.”

She moved closer, laying a hand carefully over the one he still had pressed to Emily. Her other hand took the crystal from him and, ever so gently, slotted it into place where it had once rested on his chest. It felt right, there. Warm. It belonged there.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I understand.”

“The Fright Zone is gone,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “Under all this… greenery. And I destroyed most of it, when I found out that Catra had lied to me about you. We cannot go back there.”

She kept looking at him, with that small smile on her face that said everything, and she said nothing.

“I only mean,” he continued, growing a little desperate without any feedback from her, “that if you still wished to be—well, lab partners, our former lab is gone. And I did not know if you wished to explore space, or go back to your kingdom, or—”

Her free hand unexpectedly grabbed his shoulder, pulling him down closer to her height, and she giggled at his shocked face when they were suddenly nose-to-nose. Emily rolled away, chirping, as Entrapta entwined their fingers together. He could feel her exhales brushing against his throat. He suddenly could not breathe himself, at their proximity.

“I think,” she said slowly, looking up at him through her eyelashes, drawing him in, “we should decide that together. Don’t you?”

He had felt a sensation ever since he awoke, a vague feeling of—as horrible and ugly as it was to name— _missing_ Horde Prime, and the comfort of a voice in his head telling him what to do and how to live.

That sensation vanished as soon as Entrapta’s lips touched his. She was bright and warm and joyful, and he could choose to keep that in his life.

 _He_ got to choose. This moment, and the next—his whole future. He could choose every bit of it.

He closed his eyes and leaned into the kiss, feeling her hair wrap around him like a blanket. Everyone was around, and no one was watching, and the magic-filled air was warm, and this was far, far better than he had any right to want.

But he could make that choice now, to _want_.

“I want that,” he said against her mouth, when they broke apart. He pressed his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “I want this. You.”

He felt the curve of Entrapta’s lips against his, as she smiled.

And he smiled back.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! If you did, please consider leaving a comment! :)


End file.
